-Aakancha Shaw, St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata
Researchers have identified how the slime mold Physarumpolycephalum saves memories – although it has no nervous system.
A new study uncovers the surprising abilities of a highly dynamic, single-celled organism to store and retrieve information about its environment. This ability might be attributed to the body structure of the giant single cell made up of interconnected tubes that form intricate networks. And, this single amoeba-like cell may stretch several centimeters or even meters.
It might be a possibility that the network architecture is functioning as a memory. According to researchers, the highly dynamic network reorganization of the mold could serve as a memory of the past. They conducted an experiment that showed that an encounter with food triggers the release of a chemical that travels throughout the organism and softens the tubes in the network which makes the whole organism reorient its migration towards the food.
The gradual softening of the tubes is where the existing imprints of previous food sources come into play and where information is stored and retrieved. Hence, we can infer that it is remarkable on the part of Physarum to form memories by relying on such a simple mechanism.
Source: PNAS March 9, 2021 118 (10) e2007815118; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007815118
SSRgenotyper : A New Bioinformatics Tool for Genome Re-sequencing Data
-Koustav Maiti, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College, Rahara SSRgenotyper is the SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) genotyping platform that provides scientists with re-sequence data i.e. whole genome or reduced representational data. SSRs are the microsatellites or simple tandem repeats that are used as genetic markers for genetic markers in the biological field. They are short, multiple-time […]